[usernaim]

Greetings everyone. I'm a Sonic Youth fan since 1990 and used to post on the usenet list in the mid 90s. I recognize a few of you from there.

My question is what is going on with Mildred Pierce on the Deluxe Edition cd? The volume drops for three seconds before the voice says "Mildred Pierce," about 9 seconds in. It's the only version that does this.

a) is it possible this was intentional?
b) was it ever fixed?
c) does the deluxe vinyl have the same problem?

Enlighten me!

[Chris Lawrence]

Greetings! I think yours might literally be the only version that does this, unless I'm seriously misunderstanding what you're describing or it's very subtle and I don't notice upon casual listening.

I'm listening to track 8 from disc 1 of the "Goo" deluxe reissue from 2005. At 00:12 Thurston speaks "Mildred Pierce" but there's no discernible change in volume at any point prior to that. Can you post a soundclip? Are you listening from the actual CD or a digital file of some sort?

[usernaim]

Full disclosure, I own literally ten different pressings of this (6 on vinyl, 4 on cd) but my copy of the DE cd is in a box so when I wanted to hear it again I downloaded a "flac" from the internet and guess what--it must be screwed up on that track. I'll have to dig through my boxes to get a proper rip.

[Chris Lawrence]

I figured that might be the case...

[usernaim]

Hold on now. I did dig out the disk, and it has the same flaw. Matrix code on the inner ring is B00 008 4502CD01 01@.

I ripped it with dbPowerAmp, which uses the accurate rip system to identify cds and compare what you have to what others do (this allows errors to be caught easily). Disc one only matched 3 rips. Disc two of the set matched 41. So there is a variant pressing out there with this flaw on disc one. Also, foobar says my rip and the downloaded one are bit identical.

[Chris Lawrence]

Interesting! Mine has the same matrix. Just listened to the disc itself, and there is no drop-out. Nor on the vinyl.

Did you play the disc directly to confirm the flaw or has all your listening been to ripped files? (Not that I think it would play fine, but rip wrong.)

[usernaim]

And the plot thickens. The disc plays fine in a cd player and fine on iTunes (both direct from disk and the apple lossless rip), but has the problem in foobar2000 (occurs in apple lossless, flac, and .wav), which is what I normally use for digital playback these days. So I will take it up with the developers.

--Eric

[usernaim]

OK, foobar2000 has an hdcd decoder. Only a relatively few cd players have it. When hdcd is used, volume drops 6 dB. It's possible that in mastering, they used an hdcd-capable a/d encoder, accidentally switched on hdcd for 3 seconds, and hence the volume drop when hdcd is encoded. If I switch out the hdcd decoding, foobar plays it fine.

Only one encoder had the capability, but it is favored my many top mastering studios. I have emailed John Golden, who did the mastering, about it.

Alternatively there is a fault in the decocding software.

Oh the drama. I'll keep you posted.

[Chris Lawrence]

Very bizarre!! Please do keep me posted.